Last night I left my son's room with him still asleep, and I had the desire to shout from the rooftops "He's asleep! He's asleep!" Surely every one of my friends wanted to know of my great accomplishment: My 23 month old was asleep! (at 10:45 at night). Now he has been a pretty good sleeper most of his life, but he goes through cycles of being easy to put to bed, and then returns to being hard to put to bed. He is currently in a being hard to put to bed stage, crying every night. Last night he got to sleep with some fussing, only to wake up an hour later from coughing as he was developing a cold. So I went in to calm him down, give him some medicine, and attempt to get him to sleep without more crying. I knew the only way to do that would be to lie down next to his crib until he was asleep. I tried this method just last week when he woke to the fireworks of the Fourth, and after 45 minutes of waiting, my slight rustling of movement made him wake up and cry again...